It’s Not Wise to Depart From Decades of Bipartisan Agreement on Our Nuclear Triad, Mr. Chairman

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., asks questions during a House Armed Services Committee hearing April 12, 2018. Smith, ranking member at the time, is now chairman of the committee. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Commentary By

Michaela Dodge specializes in missile defense, nuclear weapons modernization and arms control as policy analyst for defense and strategic policy in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. Read her research.

The chairman
of the House Armed Services Committee demonstrated a scary lack of
understanding of nuclear weapons policy Wednesday during a hearing
seeking outside perspectives on the U.S. nuclear posture.

Chairman Adam
Smith, D-Wash., jumped at the opportunity to attack the U.S. fleet of intercontinental
ballistic missiles, known as ICBMs, calling them unnecessary for deterrence and
easily identifiable targets.

Smith
misunderstands the value that ICBMs bring to U.S. national security and that of
our allies, which is scary given the importance of the role he plays.

Each leg of
the triad has its own valuable attributes. They are complementary and together assure
allies and deter adversaries. That is why both political parties have supported
them for decades, before and after the end of the Cold War.

Initially skeptical, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis said in September 2017 in defense of ICBMs: “I have questioned the triad, and I cannot solve the deterrent problem [by] reducing it from a triad.”

Although ICBMs
are identifiable targets, they were not meant to be stealthy. That does not
mean they are not valuable.

While each
of the other two legs of the nuclear triad can be destroyed with conventional weapon
systems, an adversary would have to spend an inordinate number of nuclear
warheads to destroy our ICBMs. Those would be warheads that would not be available
to destroy other targets in the United States.

Attacking our
ICBMs also takes away all plausible deniability on the part of U.S. adversaries,
as nuclear expert Frank Miller pointed out during the hearing.

We will know
when the U.S. homeland is under attack if ICBM fields are attacked. We may not
know with such a certainty right away if we lose a submarine or a bomber.

Eliminating the
ICBM leg of the nuclear triad would allow our adversaries to focus their
efforts narrowly on compromising other U.S. nuclear systems, including bombers
and submarines.

Our bombers
don’t even routinely fly with nuclear weapons. Some argue that the U.S. can upload
additional warheads on our submarines to maintain the same target coverage. But
adding warheads to submarine-launched ballistic missiles reduces their range
because they get heavier.

That could have negative consequences for the survivability of our submarines, since adversaries would have to search a smaller area compared to when the submarines had fewer warheads.

Reducing the
number of missiles would not substantively reduce costs associated with the
ICBM program. The missiles are the least expensive leg of the triad to operate.

And even at the peak of nuclear weapons modernization efforts—for our warheads and delivery platforms—the U.S. will not spend more than 6.5 percent of the Defense Department’s budget on such efforts, an amount that is a decreasing portion of the entire federal budget.

Skepticism and debate are healthy. Interpreting opinions as facts is dangerous.

Today’s
international environment demands that the U.S. modernize ICBMs, regardless of
what Smith thinks.

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